Business Facilities’ 14th Annual Rankings: State Rankings Report

Friday, August 10, 2018

Our 14th Annual Rankings Report keeps pace with the evolving priorities of economic development and tracks red-hot growth sectors, kicking off with the state rankings report.

You can chart the evolution of an emerging growth sector by comparing our annual Rankings Report with previous editions from year to year. When we introduce a new rankings category, that ranking usually is a high-level evaluation of who’s ahead of the curve. As solid metrics develop and real-time data becomes available, we let the numbers do the talking when we rank the leaders. Then, as sturdy branches blossom from the root of a new growth sector, our rankings categories also subdivide into critical subsets.

Thus a category that appeared under a simple rubric a decade ago—think Alternative Energy Leaders or Best Education—gives birth to myriad offspring that determine the pecking order for items that rapidly are moving to the top of everyone’s agenda, like the number of graduates with STEM-oriented degrees in a state or metro or (eventually) the number of wind turbines in the waters off coastal states.